Tuesday, June 30, 2009

My Brother is a Weirdo

The day after Dad died we were just talking about random things in the afternoon. One of my sisters was in the room with Patrick and I. I randomly talked about how in Medieval times sometimes the bones of various Saints were stolen or saved and kept for luck or for some other weird reason. I am not really sure how common this was, it was just something I read I think. I stated that and then Patrick, my brother said, "Oh no, I don't like where you are going with this!" He sort of had a smirk on his face, but I didn't think what I was saying was totally weird.

I then said that I was just glad it was not the norm to carry around a finger bone of something of Dad's. Then he said something like, "Oh, I thought that your were going to talk about the place or the tribe where the sons eat part of their father."

I said, "what like the heart for strength or something?"

He said, "Um, no."

I took another guess at some other body part.

Then he gave me a weird look. And I knew what part it was. I was aghast.

"NO WAY!"

He nodded his head that this was indeed the body part that the sons of the father ate.

"That is disgusting!" I said. "Why did you even bring that up?"

"You are the one that started it!" He claimed.

"Well, that is like saying that being shot by a rubber band warrants a nuclear response--that story was totally uncalled for. There is no way that my story about keeping a saint's knuckle bone is akin to eating Dad's junk. That is just wrong dude!"

He laughed and so did I for some sick reason. My sister kept quite the whole time and only shook her head.

Despite the crudeness of the conversation, I think that in our family and many others, tragedy is often best dealt with with humor, even sick humor.